


All Our Lives, We Were Changing

by orphan_account



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Multi, it makes me happy, just some young adults thinkin about their futures, that's all, this is grossly self-indulgent lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The moment he acknowledged the reality of their situation— the everpresent fact that they were at war— it also occurred to him that even after they defeat the Organization, there will be endless pieces to pick up. To put it bluntly, there wouldn't be any settling down so long as they were Guardians.





	All Our Lives, We Were Changing

**Author's Note:**

> hello, my name is meg and i write like, one (1) kingdom hearts sadfic a year before disappearing back into real life, but this time i hit a roadblock and wrote something sweet and mushy and entirely self-serving to make up for it :')
> 
> please enjoy this grossly cute sokai fic composed mostly of my unused headcanons!

Radiant Garden looks so much more beautiful since restoration has picked up the pace. Although it doesn’t quite have the allure it had in the photos secretly stolen from Yen Sid’s library, Sora can’t deny the progress being made. Countless shops line the square, vibrant and bustling compared to the makeshift synthesis garages and (haughtily overpriced) Moogle Markets present during his last visit. The borough is decorated with floral wreaths on front doors and spice boxes hanging from window sills— hell, even Merlin’s house has had a festive upgrade.

Of course, there are still some areas where restoration has hit a bit of a roadblock. Namely, the ravine and maw remain undeveloped. If Sora looks closely enough at the walls of the gully, he can make out the burn marks from countless _Thundagas_ and _Firagas_ cast well over a year ago; if he looks even closer, he can pick out the minute details that distinguish his magic from Donald’s. When Sora points this out, Donald has the gall to laugh.

“Of course you can tell,” he quacks, “your magic is messy. I can control my spells.”

“Hey now! My magic isn’t messy!” Sora cries, indignant. Riku and Kairi are trying (and failing) to hide their sputtering laughs and as the brunet continues, “I’m just as good a mage as you are.”

“Pahaha! That’s cute!” Donald crosses his arms (... wings?) and angles his head up at Sora. That isn’t even the most infuriating part. The duck is grinning, looking at him like a child he’s pulling back down to earth. “Whatever you say, half-pint.” Sora’s upper lip curls and he mumbles, “At least I heal you when you need it.”

When Sora’s dinner is spiked with panacea, incredibly powerful yet notoriously bitter, Donald swears to heaven that he doesn’t know a thing about it.

“Do you think we’ll ever have a normal life again?” Sora asks a couple days later, eyeing Oathkeeper up and down. It gleams with an iridescence he could only compare to that of a pearl— the real kind, shimmering away under violent waves and coral cities— and Sora can see the reflection of Kairi’s red hair in the steel of its guards. He plops himself on the fountain beside the princess, who’s cracking open a bottle of water when she replies with shocking certainty, “Of course we will.”

Sora chuckles, dismissing the blade. “You’re confident.”

“Yeah, I am,” Kairi affirms, capping her bottle and setting it on her other side. She kicks her feet playfully in front of her and leans over to drag her fingers through the cascading water. “That old shit can’t live forever.”

“I like a woman with an agenda,” Sora teases, and Kairi rewards him with a splash of fountain water. When he stops laughing long enough to open his eyes, he peeks at the devilish smirk she’s branding.

“But, seriously,” he starts, removing his wet gauntlets and jacket, “you really think we’ll have that kind of chance?”

Kairi shrugs. “Why wouldn’t we? We’re going to defeat Xehanort, no matter what.”

“What about after the war?” he returns, and Kairi’s face blanks. “There will be worlds to repair— or, hey, what if they become connected again? We’ll have to help everyone adjust.” Sora’s starting to ramble in that way he does, but that doesn’t detract from anything he’s saying. He actually has a fair point: it will be a lot of work. She hadn’t thought to consider the damage a fully-fledged war could do to the land, or its people. There aren’t a lot of people who deny the existence of many worlds these days (much to Sora’s pride and Donald’s chagrin), and those who do tend to live with their noses upturned and eyes downcast. Still, even those who believe will undoubtedly need help dealing with the changes to their lives. Kairi taps her chin before replying, “After that, then. We’ll manage.”

This doesn’t satisfy him. Sora turns to her, his blue eyes wide. “We’ll still have Keyblades, which means there’ll still be Heartless. It’ll be our job to make sure they can’t hurt the new world, won’t it?” His eyebrows knit and he’s starting to fidget with the buttons on his pant leg; Kairi swats at his hand and scoots an inch closer.

“What’s got you thinking about all this?” she asks, tilting her head. Sora smiles sheepishly and turns away from her slightly, and Kairi catches a flush spreading up his neck and to his ears. “It’s nothing important!” he blurts, but she inches closer still.

“Well, that’s just not true,” she says, quite matter-of-factly. Sora relents, finally, propping his leg up on the brick and turning to face her fully. “Don’t laugh,” he starts, to which Kairi remains silent. “Remember last summer?”

Kairi rolls her eyes and touches his cheek, tugging it a little. “Of course I do, doofus.”

Sora chuckles and pushes her hand away, opting to hold it instead. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles, paying no mind to the callouses building on her palm. “We were so happy then,” he says, to which Kairi retorts, “and we’re happy now.”

“Yeah! We are.” Sora sighs, not out of frustration with her, simply from the desire and failure to find the right words. (English isn’t actually his first language— he grew up learning the native Island tongue from his mother, picking up English phrases from Riku when they played. Kairi’s pretty used to watching him struggle for words.) He pauses a moment longer, then fixes her with a soft gaze that takes her breath.

“I was thinking it’d be nice to date without anything else getting in the way,” he finally says. Birds sing absently behind them, the fountain’s applause echoes throughout the court, and the only thing that escapes Kairi is a small, hushed, “Oh.”

It isn’t that revolutionary of a statement, she thinks. Not really. Although it hadn’t occurred to her so explicitly, Kairi felt the same. She’d lived an entire year without him, left alone without even memories to comfort her. Fate had stolen them all away. Now he’s sitting in front of her, with sopping wet gauntlets and a strange sort of look on his face, and it dawns on Kairi for the first time since that summer that their future together really is uncertain.

Of course, this had been on Sora’s mind for months. The moment he realized the reality of their situation— the everpresent fact that they were at war— it also occurred to him that even after they defeat the Organization, there will be endless pieces to pick up, countless worlds and lives to reconstruct. He would do it, obviously, as Sora couldn't turn a blind eye to someone in need even if he tried, but accepting that responsibility came with the understanding that personal affairs would have to be put on hold. To put it bluntly, there wouldn't be any settling down so long as they were Guardians.

“You've thought about it too, right?” Sora asks, laughing a tad nervously.

Kairi sets her head in her hand. “Actually, not as much as you have. I guess I’ve just been focusing on right now,” she says. Sora blushed even harder than he’d already been and Kairi stammered, “B-but you’re right! It’s probably something we should talk about.”

Nodding and clearing his throat, Sora straightens up. He opens his mouth but another shy laugh catches in him off guard; he points a finger at her and says again, “Don’t laugh,” to which Kairi, of course, chuckles and promises that she won’t. He rolls his eyes at her in return and she folds her hands on her legs, patient. “I just realized that if we’re always off saving worlds and playing this universe’s little game of human chess,” he says, “there’ll never be time for us. To, you know, plan the future.”

Kairi remains quiet for a moment, and then, “What kind of future do you want?”

“Honestly?” Sora starts, and then he draws a breath. “I want— and this is way, way out there, much later, don’t get me wrong— I want to marry you. And I think I wanna have a family someday. And it just doesn’t seem like that fits into all this, ya know?”

Sora is the type of person who needs to hear and be heard. Kairi’s known this since they were little, since they had their first kiddie-fight in second grade and she thought it was mutually understood that she’d forgiven him. After that incident, Kairi made sure she had certain phrases memorized perfectly in the native tongue, as he was still a bit behind she and Riku in English literacy. (“I’m sorry,” “I forgive you,” and “I love you” were the big three.) Now, the young adults they are, they pay close attention to how they can best communicate with each other, and Kairi understands his need to be understood.

Still, it’s shocking for him to be this forward. It takes Kairi several beats of silence to regain her composure, and she sincerely hopes the surprise doesn’t show on her face. Unfortunately, by the way Sora is suddenly avoiding her eyes, she thinks maybe she isn’t the bluffer she imagines.

“You really have been thinking,” she starts, and Sora scratches the back of his neck. “Just a little. I don’t wanna scare you or anything.”

Kairi smiles then, soft and kind, and she takes his hand in hers once more. “I’m glad you told me, first of all,” she says, which makes Sora brighten almost instantly. “And you're not scaring me. If anything was ever gonna scare me away from you, I’d be halfway across the cosmos right now.”

He laughs at that, which Kairi calls a win. 

“I think I’ll want those things too, someday,” she starts, “but you're right. There’ll probably be tons of things we have to do for the worlds first, even after Xehanort.” She rubs her thumb against his knuckles the way he does to her, ignoring how dry and cracked and battle-torn the skin of his bare hand is. Sora squeezes his hand around hers, a kind of pressure that solidifies him with her.

“People always say there's never a ‘right time’ for anything,” he says, not particularly certain where his train of the thought is headed, but sure that he wanted it said. Kairi nods, so he takes that as an invitation to keep going. “But there are better times, right? I wouldn't propose to you now, because, you know, we're eighteen and playing Body-Monopoly with a storybook villain.” They both cackle, completely unbridled, although Sora’s definitely glad no one else had been around to hear that quip. Kairi whaps him on the arm, and he thinks maybe he'll tell it to Lea later. Lea has an awful sense of humor.

“But I think my point is,” he says, catching his breath, “I don't know if we'll ever get that better time. We're always gonna be fighting.”

“Mm,” Kairi hums, “not always. There is an end to this, Sora.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

Sora presses his forehead into hers, placing a kiss on the tip of her nose. “That's why I love you,” he whispers, and Kairi squeezes his hand in return. The four words she says then, heard only by them, come out without thought, ever as true as they were when she said them the first time. “I love you too,” she says, and she thinks that although she lives to kick ass at the moment, maybe she wouldn't mind settling down one day. If it's with someone like him, it doesn't have to be for him— whatever they decide, they do together, and if Kairi’s honest with herself, he makes her want to settle. He makes her want the spice gardens in the windowsill and the floral wreath on the front door, the quiet neighbourhood and bustling market.

“Would you wanna live on the Islands?” she asks somewhat abruptly, and Sora draws back, eyebrows raised. “Hypothetically,” she adds. Sora pushes his lip out in thought and settles for, “I don't know, actually. I didn't think about that.”

“World's a big place,” she says.

Smirking a little too proudly for his surprise just a moment ago, Sora presses in closer. “Got you thinking now too, huh?” Kairi whaps his arm once more, muttering something along the lines of, “Yeah, I’ll get you thinkin’ about something,” (which actually does absolutely nothing but spur his teasing further), and as he closes in on her lips, Kairi’s heart swells within her chest.

Wait until they tell Riku.


End file.
